


Torchbearer

by AvaDiablo



Series: Innocent Kisses [5]
Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 19:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10577838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaDiablo/pseuds/AvaDiablo
Summary: Jun complains to Ohno about Nino forcefully kissing him and telling him to end the cycle of Arashi members kissing each other and stirring up emotions where they don't belong.





	

Jun stacked the plates in his cupboard after the dishes. Ohno sat at his coffee table, busying himself with the wine.  
“And now he wants me to stop snowballing it any further,” Jun finishes his account of the whole ‘Nino kissed me out of anger’ story. “And I’m blaming you,” he said mock accusation in his voice as he threw the towel on the counter and join his long time friend on his couch. Ohno looked at him with feigned shock.  
“Really? How is this my fault, again? Besides, I bet you liked it.” His leader winked. Jun took his glass of red wine together with his own and kept it out of reach.  
“I think you’ve had enough of that. Time for you to go.”

Ohno smiled sheepishly before turning a bit more serious. Jun put the wine back on the table.  
“I know you’re kidding. But if I had known any of it, I would’ve left Aiba crying on the couch all by himself.” Jun raised an eyebrow and shook his head  
“No, you wouldn’t have.” After all this was Aiba Masaki they were discussing. The eternal happy guy, their resident Sunshine-boy. The one to cheer every one up with some lame, total irrelevant backhanded remark, so far from left-field you wouldn’t have seen it coming if it was attached to a train. None of them would have left a crying Aiba all by himself.  
“Maybe next time you’ll just not stick your tongue down his throat,” Jun remarked dryly. Ohno stuck his tongue out in mock.

“I didn’t plan it,” Ohno said after a short silence, “It’s not like I saw him and saw a chance, or something.”  
“It’s not you kissing him that’s really the problem, is it. It’s all the other stuff around it. Besides Nino is treating it like it’s a game of tag, being all ‘Nino’ about it. Plus, he will kill Aiba when we are going to work tomorrow.”  
His leader frowned.  
‘How so?”  
“I accidentally let it slip Aiba kissed him as an experiment. He flipped.” 

Shaking his head Ohno sighed. “Of course he flipped.” Jun frowned at that.  
“Why is that ‘of course’? Is there something between them? Something I don’t know about?” Ohno didn’t respond right away. He played with his wine glass instead, downed all the content and reached out for the bottle to refill it. Jun watched him in silence and added his wineglass next to his to top it off.  
“That bad, really?”  
“You don’t know the half of it,” Ohno mumbled, “You think Aiba’s crush on Sho is bad? I don’t even know how to explain this thing between Aiba and Nino.” Ohno took a few large swigs, exchanged the seat on the couch for the floor to lean his back against it.  
“Try,” Jun coaxed him into sharing. It wasn’t like he wanted to know, but it sounded like he should know for the good of the group.  
“No. Can’t. Won’t.” 

Jun added some more wine to his leader’s glass. The look Ohno gave him, said that he knew what the younger one was trying to do - get him drunk.  
“They need to work it out,” was all he said staring into his glass.  
‘That’s what I said,” Jun offered taking the seat on the floor next to Ohno, “But now I don’t know if that’s even smart. Nino looked upset.”  
“Of course he is! Jun, he’s not just crushing on him. This is…” Ohno couldn’t even come up with a comparison.  
“Love?” the youngest supplied.  
“Love? Love is not even close to what Nino feels. He keeps people out for a reason.”  
“He’s been hurt a lot,” Jun agreed and Ohno made a mock sound that sounded like a laugh.  
“He’s not stupid. He doesn’t have all those walls to keep people from hurting him. He has them so he noone would be foolish enough to love him. The higher the wall, the more effort people will have to go through to knock them down, or knock a hole into it.”  
“He let us in,” Jun counters Ohno’s logic.  
“You’re delusional. We are getting glimpses. He’s opened doors, sure. But barred them with wires and hurdles.”

Jun stared a bit stunned.  
“I’ve known the guy for twenty years, surely you’re making this up.”  
“Have some wine, Jun.” Ohno poured their glasses. Jun wanted to remark about Ohno not wanting to tell about the situation of Aiba and Nino, but since he was - who was he to tell him? Honesty tugged at him.  
“Are you sure you should discuss this with me? If it’s a secret or something, you should keep it between you two.”  
“I should,” Ohno agreed.  
“Then we should stop drinking. You should go home. And I need to think about a plan that would prevent Nino from murdering Aiba tomorrow morning.”  
“They hooked up tonight,” Ohno said swirling the wine before taking a sip. He caught Jun’s eye and added in a slow, low tone, “Pun not intended.”

“So come tomorrow there might not even be an Arashi left.”  
“Bit extreme, Jun-kun.”  
“You didn’t see Nino. I’ve hardly ever seen him that pissed off.”  
“They’ll work it out. They always do.”  
“You sound like this happened before.” Jun frowned. He took some pride in the fact that hardly anything was secretive between the five of them. And he was stunned there was something this huge going on under the surface and he had no clue what so ever. “Has anything like this happened before? Am I the only one not aware of this?”  
“Pretty sure Sho doesn’t know either.”  
“Hmm, I guess Nino and you talk a lot, then?” Ohno, who had been staring at the little leftover wine in his glass, looked up at that.  
“It’s actually Aiba who talks to me. Nino and I are close, yes, but it’s actually Aiba who talks.”  
“Figures. Drunken nights and all that.” Ohno frowned at the casual way Jun mentions it.  
“This isn’t a joke. We never discuss Nino drunk.” He sounded agitated for some reason.  
“Sorry. How was I supposed to know.”

“But yes, this happens on occasion and they always figure it out.”  
“I probably don’t want to know how,” Jun says matter of factly, wondering if he should drink more, stop drinking, or maybe bring out some hard liquor. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say, how he was supposed to react to the things he’d just was told by his leader.  
“They’ll talk. They’ll cry - or Aiba will.”  
“I can’t believe that something this serious is going on between them,” Jun says getting up to go to the kitchen. He needs to do something. He’s over analysing, and if Ohno says they’ll work it out he should believe it, especially since he didn’t even know about this at all. And through his analysis he can’t help himself but feel sorry for Kazu. And Aiba. God, did Aiba even know? Jun wasn’t sure that even he grasped the entirety of what Nino was feeling. They’d been together and best friends since even before he had known them. When had Kazunari even developed such strong feelings for the other? How had they dealt with it back then? Had Aiba ever reciprocated those feelings? Had they been in a relationship together? Heck, Jun needed a drink, get drunk even, and pretend he didn’t know - doesn’t know - anything about that whole situation. And that’s where this whole thing turned on him. Because they hadn’t trusted him with something so important. And that hurt. 

“What’s going through your mind right now?”  
Ohno’s standing close to him in his kitchen, and he hadn’t even heard him following him. Ohno and his surprising sneaking and covered ways to creep up on people. At least he didn’t show up behind him. His leader reached out and intercepted a tear from the corner of Jun’s right eye.  
“Arashi is the most important thing to me,’ he confided slowly, turning towards the cabinet and pulling out a malt whiskey, “And this what you are telling me is a time bomb waiting to happen.” The poured a glass and downed it in one go, on top of the wine. “And no one even thought of telling me.”  
“You’re being iffy because you didn’t know? Would it have made a difference if you did know? What would you have told them if you did?” Ohno had his arms crossed as he leaned with his back against the counter, looking interested in the answer to this questions.  
“I don’t know,” Jun sighed after thinking it over, pouring another glass for himself and not offering Ohno any.  
“Would you have told them to ‘get over it’? Would you have told Aiba to grow up? Or Nino to stop being so hung up on the guy? Do you think it’s unhealthy how they feel?”  
“I don’t know,” Jun repeated, hands leaning on the counter as he stared at his floor below his feet.

“Well, what would you tell them?”  
“I said I don’t know! I didn’t know until just now, did I?”  
“Then, why are you getting angry?”  
“I’m not angry. And even if they’d hook up, get married and have a bunch of freaking kids - it still wouldn’t matter. I just need to know Arashi is save. That’s all. I couldn’t care less what they do.”  
“Liar,” Ohno countered, getting a glass of his own, and pouring himself whiskey, since Jun didn’t offer. Jun stared at him. There was anger in his eyes, but it didn’t even faze his leader used as he was to tantrums thrown by the Jun, Nino and Sho. The only one who could ever blindside him would be Aiba, but in the whole of know him, the guy had only thrown one one time.  
“I’m not lying.” the youngest muttered.  
“Whatever. Just know that this whole conversation started because you got kissed by Ninomiya Kazunari and you like it.” Jun cast him a condemning look and Ohno raised one eyebrow as if to challenge him to contradict him. “Scary, huh?”

Jun huffed, taking his glass and bottle and moved back to the living room. Ohno stayed in the kitchen area watching the youngest.  
‘So let’s count back to what you said. I kissed Aiba, Aiba kissed Sho-kun, then Aiba kissed Nino, Nino kissed you. So either, you kiss Sho-kun or you kiss me. Making it a full circle.”  
Jun stared ahead. Not responding to Ohno’s words, seemingly caught in his own thoughts. ‘You kiss me, making it a full circle.’ The sentence replayed. Kissing Ohno? Was he serious? He hadn’t shared a kiss with him since reaching their early twenties. Aiba was the one giving kisses out like candy. And they had kissed a whole lot - usually when drunk, crying over how wonderful Arashi was, how nearly perfect their lives were, how they loved their little group, their mutual friends. He couldn’t remember half of the times they’d probably kissed. Because it didn’t really mean anything.

But kissing Leader? He wasn’t even that drunk yet. And he wasn’t sobbing, gushing over their beloved Arashi. Okay, he wasn’t exactly sober; that’s why he was honestly thinking about it. Because, well, he wouldn’t normally think about it. And what kind of kiss would this be? One like old times? His hands turned clammy as he remembered the last time they’d share one. How old had they been? It had been messy and drunk.

Jun stared at his glass and shoved it slowly aside. He wasn’t seriously thinking about this, was he? Maybe he should really consider kissing Sho-kun instead. It would be safer, he reasoned, though he didn’t really know why that would be. See, this is what happens when people drink, he chastised himself. Ohno was probably drunk too. Maybe if they were both drunk, they wouldn’t remember this and -

“Well?”  
Ohno’s voice was soft and close by his ear. When Jun turned, Ohno had taken the seat beside him against the couch again. The younger one breathed in a deep breath as he considered his - considered what? His options? Did he have options? This was -

Holy heck!  
His mind short circuited when his Leader doomed up in his vision, turning his head slightly toward him. “Maybe I should make this decision for you,” he mumbled, eyes staying on Jun’s for a moment. Jun knew this was the part he should back out. This was the part he could say ‘no’. Instead he stayed still and waited. “Being quiet is an agreement in it’s own right, you know,” Ohno warned.  
“I know,” the youngest Arashi member agreed kind of breathlessly.  
“Then you want me to kiss you?” prodded the oldest. Jun huffed, making his leader chuckle. “Tell me, Jun-kun. You want this to happen?”  
“You are cruel, old man. I thought you wanted to make the decision for me. Me agreeing is the same as me making the decision.”  
“So you made your decision, then?”  
“I think you need to leave,” Jun mumbled feeling a blush crawl over his cheeks.  
“I’m still waiting to be thrown out the first time you said that.”

As Jun didn’t move Ohno did make the choice for them, by pulling him closer and covering his mouth with his. As kisses and love stories go, Jun knew he needed to feel something. Like a surprise jolt with their lips locked together, of he should feel a surge of passion or fluster rise in his body, but it didn’t happen.  
Instead, Ohno’s mouth was warm on his, the pressure was nice and somehow familiar. There wasn’t instant touching as they would have in the past. The only one touching was Ohno with his hand still slightly on his chin, as to keep reminding him where his mouth belonged. It felt good. 

But good wasn’t good enough, Jun realised. Why settle for good or nice, when you can have what you want when it’s so freely offered. And this was his beloved Leader, after all. Jun leaned in inching his tongue against that luscious hot entrance that Ohno called his mouth. For a small moment he thought his Leader would tease him by keeping his lips together, giving him the idea he might be rushing forward into something.  
Ohno mumbled his name in a low whisper that almost sounded like a moan before giving Jun access. They kept the kiss slow, making their tongues dance and snuggle around each other. Jun reached out, pulling Ohno closer as he sat up, cupping his face in his hands as he went about exploring the heat that lay within the other’s mouth. Ohno tasted sweet, nearly innocent - which was a ludicrous description. After all, Ohno was anything but innocent. His breath was heated as his leader backed away a little. The older one swallowed, seemingly unsure about what was happening, after all this had been his idea.

There was something in his eyes Jun couldn’t make out. But he didn’t want to wait before having another change to kiss him again. But as he leaned in again, he was met with Ohno’s fingertips against his lips. There was a sorry note flashing through those orbs.  
“I don’t want to rush this.” Jun frowned not knowing what to say to that. “I don’t want this to be just a thing that doesn’t mean anything.” The younger blinked. “But it’s okay if you don’t see it that way.”  
“What are you saying? Or trying to say?”  
“I don’t want ‘this’,” he indicated the both of them, “to mean nothing. This is not angry kissing, or a kiss to make you feel better. If you continue to kiss me, it will mean something more to me. I won’t let it end like the last time.”

Jun frowned some more. No one actually let it end. Last time they had been young. It happened, it lasted a while and like with everything that got old it withered and died. So, he was confused. Because he couldn’t remember the details, so what Ohno was saying didn’t fit the memory  
“You let it end, last time?” Really, did he really sound that ignorant asking that? Ohno had taken his fingers away and looked lost himself. But he nodded. “We were kids, sort of. We were under constant pressure. We did a lot off stuff that was questionable. All of us. But you were the youngest, and you were trying your hardest to make it all work. But I - I knew what I was doing.” Jun raised an eyebrow.  
“You’re implying I didn’t? You’re not that much older. Only three years.”  
“It’s not much, but when you’re eighteen and me being twenty-one, it makes a difference. I was serious, then. And I’m serious now. This is not some game to me.”  
“What exactly are you saying? That you like me? Love me?” Ohno reached out for the glass of alcohol on the table, but Jun beat him to it and kept it out of reach. “We’re not getting drunk or drinking in courage. Obviously, we need to discuss this.”  
Ohno sighed a bit frustrated. “There’s not much to discuss. Either we kiss or leave it as it is. No harm done.”  
“No harm done? You’re saying that you somehow carried a torch for me around for several years. That I’m more than a simple band-mate to you. And now you’re trying to play it off as ‘no harm done’?” Jun paused as something dawned on him. He lowered his voice as this realisation meant more than his Leader was letting on. “You’re scared, aren’t you?” Leader wasn’t scared of anything. Not of sudden jump scares in movies, or the sudden surprises in their shows. He wasn’t scared to try new things, or be the guinea pig in all of Aiba’s experiments on and off screen. If this was scaring him, Jun concluded staring into those forlorn eyes, he needed to tread carefully.

Ohno on the other hand simply shrugged. “Like I said, if it doesn’t mean anything, leave it as it is.”  
“But you -” Jun started not knowing how to finish that sentence.  
“I like you, Jun. I have liked you for a long time. And I’m afraid - yes - if I say more you’ll run away and everything will end. And I would not like for that to happen.” Jun broke their eye contact for a moment, looking down to his hands.  
“And by ‘everything’ you mean?”  
“Everything,” Ohno simply said, taking Jun’s hands in his own making him look up again.

“Everything won’t end because of this,” Jun commented hesitantly. “And I don’t know if I can give or offer the same thing you want from me, But I can promise that it’s not meaningless. It never was meaningless to begin with.” Ohno sighed with a bit of relief.  
“That’s good to know.” The comment made Jun smirk a little too. They watched each other for a moment. Ohno reached out and trailed his fingers through Jun’s hair. The locks soft between his fingers, his stare turning softer, the smile evening out as he pulled Jun closer for another kiss.

“The best way to kiss is an equal amount of pressure between two partners. A little give and take, and not trying to stab the other with your tongue.” Ohno repeated those words as he couldn’t help the smirk from forming as the kiss deepened. Jun giggled breathlessly.  
“You told me that when we first kissed. It was my first kiss with a guy.”  
“I know,” Ohno replied between little licks and bites around Jun’s mouth, “I can tell you’ve been practising.”  
“Tease,” Jun answered in return, leaning into his leader and working him to the ground. Ohno willingly let him. Their tongues intertwined, snuggled and danced around each other; their breath mingled. Ohno kept one hand in Jun’s hair, but the other roamed over his clothed back, not caring how far this kiss would have them go. He tried not to question it this time, after all, Jun had a pretty good idea of where he stood.

His hand pulled on his shirt and slipped underneath the fabric. Jun’s heart was pounding heavily enough for Ohno to feel it as his moved his hand to the front, to caress his chest and run his fingers over his nipples.

“I really like kissing you,” Ohno breathes from below, as they parted their lips for some much needed air. Jun continues to kiss the skin on Ohno’s neck, trying to open buttons of his button-down shirt. The comment catches Jun by total surprise, stilling him in his actions for a moment. “I’ve dreamed about this many times.”  
The confession causes nerves and butterflies in his stomach to stir a lot more than they have been. Ohno’s fingers trail his hair again and as they move to the font to cup his face, he presses his cheek against them and cover those long fingers with his own. Part of this moment is thrilling beyond belief. Jun sits up, straddling him. He’s getting to the point where nothing else will matter but what’s between them. He wants to ride the wave and see where it takes them. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but Jun knows he will settle for nothing less.


End file.
